How to motivate your sales team?

The best sales teams on the planet also happen to be the most motivated, which is why it’s important to monitor your team’s engagement and productivity in relation to their performance. Chances are that there is at least one member on your sales team that has significant room for improvement; this might even be true of most of your team; this is perfectly normal.

Traditional sales is a tough, stressful, demanding career, but thanks to the advent of sales gamification strategies, the sales environments of tomorrow are fun, exciting, and rewarding. If you want to motivate your sales force, then sales gamification is one sure-fire way to increase employee engagement and productivity. But how do you motivate your team to push themselves so that they perform their best?

In this article, we will go over a proven method for increasing engagement and improving your sales team’s performance; this is sales gamification. We will look at why sales gamification works, how to use it to motivate every member of your team, as well as some of the sales incentives that can be used to improve the ROI on your gamification efforts.

Why is it important to motivate your sales team?

Unmotivated teams and individuals simply don’t perform as well as their motivated counterparts. This is in part due to the fact that unmotivated teams are uninspired, possibly bored, and probably stressed out about making sales; all of this leads to customers sensing desperation which is a sure-fire way to ensure that your teams’ performance continues to be lackluster.

By motivating your team to do the best that they possibly can, you’ll be able to increase the number of sales your team is making, generate more revenue and increase company profits. But how do you actually motivate your sales team?

The best way to motivate your sales team

The best way to motivate an uninspired sales team is by implementing a sales gamification program. In case you are unaware of what sales gamification is, it’s when you incentivize your team by incorporating the fun elements of games into your sales process and then offer prizes and rewards when your team, or individuals on your team, reach or exceed specific KPI’s and targets.

Rewarding those employees who perform well will inspire them to perform even better moving forward and encourage those who have room to improve to try harder, increase their engagement, and improve their performance. But how do you actually reward your sales associates with this type of sales gamification strategy?

The trick is to make things fun and offer prizes that are actually exciting rather than inexpensive or generic rewards. If you want to get people excited about improving their performance, then you need to give them a reason to be excited. Cash bonuses, physical or digital prizes, paid personal time off, tickets or experiences, personal and career development opportunities, and recognition are great sales incentives and are the hallmarks of any good sales gamification initiative.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the best sales incentives that will motivate your team, encouraging them to perform their best and achieve fantastic engagement, productivity, and performance levels.

What are some good sales incentives to offer?

Now, this list is by no means exhaustive, and there are many other sorts of sales incentives that can work wonders when you want to inspire and motivate your team; but these sales incentives are a great place to start and have been proven to encourage even the most apathetic sales teams to become the best that they can be.

1. Offer a cash bonus

For the most part, nothing inspires people to work harder, quite like the opportunity to “win” money. By offering a cash prize such as a one-time bonus, you will get everybody’s attention and see a noticeable improvement in your team’s performance almost immediately. Offer X number of dollars to the first person who makes five sales this week and watch how fast those sales come in. Money is a powerful motivator, and your team members will certainly want to do their best whenever there is a monetary reward on offer.

2. Offer a nifty prize

Offering prices is another great way to increase your team’s motivation. When you gamify your sales environment, try to come up with a few different fun ways that employees can earn prizes. Team challenges, sales races, and one vs. one sales games allow you to keep things fun, interesting, and exciting. Offer prizes that are actually valuable, such as new TVs, smartphones, laptops, home appliances, and other such rewards; this will surely motivate your team to put forth their best effort in hopes of winning an awesome prize.

3. Offer personal time

Paid personal time off might be the best motivator other than money. This can be a small prize like a half-day off work with pay, a late start, or an extra sick day, or it can be a large quarterly or yearly prize such as an extra week of paid vacation time. By offering paid time off as a sales incentive, your team will be motivated to stay focused, engaged, and committed to delivering the best results.

4. Offer an experience

Cash and prizes are awesome motivators, but fun experiences make fantastic sales incentives as well. Consider offering concert tickets or seats to an upcoming sporting event, but just make sure that it’s an event that appeals to everybody on your sales team; otherwise, you will risk alienating certain members who may not be inspired to improve their performance as they’re not interested in the prize being offered.

5. Offer status

Finally, consider offering tuition reimbursement, personal development, career development, and recognition as a means by which to motivate your employees to break out of their slump and do their very best. Paid time off to attend a seminar, conference, or workshop further develops your top-performing talent and recognizes and rewards their contribution, which will, in turn, increase their loyalty, commitment, and engagement, which are the three pillars upon which high-performance sales teams stand.

Summary

Even the best sales teams can become unmotivated from time to time, but when you implement a sales gamification strategy, you can motivate your team to perform their very best by offering valuable sales incentives, such as cash bonuses, exciting prizes, paid personal time off, interesting experiences or personal and career development opportunities.